January 14th

Monday

2019

This week in our Quick Hits, we take a look at music industry insights for 2019!

Why the Music Business Can’t Afford to Ignore the Middle East In 2019

When the IFPI released its 2018 Global Report in Apr. 2018, one region was completely absent from its pages: the Middle East.The music industry has historically turned a blind eye on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) because the vast majority of the region’s consumers still listen to music for free — either through legal ad-supported channels, or through physical or online piracy. By some reports, piracy still costs the wider MENA entertainment industry $500 million annually

Music Tech Trends to Bolster the Music Industry in 2019

AI usage is proliferating throughout the music industry in two ways: for predictive analytics and composing music. On the predictive analytics side, experts are now using AI to predict the musical tastes of users based on the song duration. Researchers determined that people will cancel the playback of songs they dislike and will listen all the way through songs they enjoy, which can be used to provide a base dataset to train a machine learning-powered recommendation engine.

Deutsche Bank slaps 29bn valuation on Universal Music Group

Trebles all around at Universal Music Group: the company is worth 29bn ($33bn) now! Although perhaps hold off on the company wide conge for now, since this is just an estimate from Deutsche Bank as UMG’s parent company Vivendi prepares to sell off up to 50% of its music group.